Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
of trust and commitment to standards could emerge. The opportunity for farmers and
consumers to interact as co-stewards would create an appreciation for the attributes that
consumers' value, the relationship between these valued attributes, the production process
and the price farmers are able to fetch for their product. On the other hand, consumers would
get an appreciation for the process that produces the valued attribute. Over time, the “deep
trust” that would develop between producers and consumers as a result of the co-creation of
understanding of the role of consumer and farmer in meeting each other's need would lead to
an effective monitoring system. This level of understanding could potentially lead to the
identification of points of weakness in the process; whereupon, co-stewards would take action
to modify existing protocols that would reduce the likelihood of opportunistic behavior.
The idea of entrepreneurial social capital espoused by [23] provides a conceptual basis for our
proposed co-creation of an effective and inexpensive monitoring system. In the instance
outlined above, co-stewards (the community of consumers and producers) have the potential
to serve as a catalyst for mobilizing entrepreneurial social infrastructure (ESI). [23] Defines ESI
as having three elements: symbolic diversity, resource mobilization and quality of networks.
Symbolic diversity enables co-stewards to encourage participation, dissent, accept challenges
to the status quo and embrace constructive controversy and critiques; it encourages people to
focus on the process and the arguments instead of the personalities involved. It also encourages
resource mobilization, which involves promoting local investment by residents in the com‐
munity, equity in resource and risk distribution and collective investment in the community.
Quality networks are encouraged by establishing horizontal and vertical linkages. Horizontal
networking links co-stewards in similar circumstances and promotes learning by sharing
experiences and information from different perspectives. Vertical linkages draw on resources
of others operating in dissimilar circumstances, or in different systems.
It enables co-stewards to
attract resources from private and public sources outside the community, for example, from entities with
different levels of expertise and capacity relevant to the problem at hand
(our emphasis).
5. Assessing consumers preferences toward production system and
consumers preferences for the attributes of fresh fruits and vegetables
4
This next section will examine the attitude of consumers toward organic, sustainable and
conventional production system and consumers preferences for the attributes of fresh fruits
and vegetables. As discussed earlier, sustainable production lies between organic and
conventional production system on our continuum described above. Thus, a sustainable
agricultural production system is operationalized as employing good agricultural practices
(judicious use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides), integrated pest management and
emphasizes the use of natural cultural practices and fertilizers and insecticides from natural
sources as much as possible.
